


To Live

by dracofiend



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-03
Updated: 2011-12-03
Packaged: 2017-10-26 20:58:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/287812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dracofiend/pseuds/dracofiend
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hathaway knows how to live.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Live

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to lygtemanden for the Britpicking! ♥ References (not too spoilery) to all seasons.

Lewis looks on his surroundings with an eye single to the truth, and Hathaway appreciates this. It’s not every inspector who refrains from playing the politics (one cannot escape the politics, Hathaway has learned, not in the house of the Lord nor in the dens of sinners)—Lewis can’t be bothered to clamber over others. He is a man with defined ambitions: to catch the killer, process the paperwork, and have a pint. Hathaway’s life has never been simpler.

It’s simple to request the permanent re-assignment from DI Knox; risky, but simple (the chief superintendent looks at him with shock when he poses the question with his soft-spoken voice and bland-deferential face. “Ma’am,” he says to her upswept brows, which announce to him directly that he is a cheeky upstart who has presumed to cross the line). He’s tipped his hand as a non-conformist in sheep’s clothing, but it had to be done. He isn’t one to let opportunity slip past, to ignore conviction despite where his convictions have led him, before. He is Attaway Hathaway; he is Wolfgang Christ. He is James the Just.

He’s just James, and that’s what Lewis expects of him. Hathaway’s life has never been simpler.

+++

Hathaway is left alone late in the evening, and in the office they share he stretches his arms wide, standing from his chair. His eyes are tired; the light of the screen turns his face and soul blue. He twists, hearing his spine crack once, twice as he bends at the waist. His shirt is rumpled, nearing untucked when he shuffles toward Lewis’ desk. It’s dark, but the lamp on his side illuminates the photograph of the governor, grinning in deep green.

Lewis has got an arm around the missus; the edges of his fingers would be visible as flesh-coloured crescents against the vermillion of her blouse in the fluorescent light of day. As it is, Hathaway can just make out their figures, and their perpetual laughing smiles. Hathaway frowns, droops his head, peering at the picture that he’s studied so long, from behind his desk and in front of it, half-obscured by stacks of files or not at all. He stares a moment longer before breathing in. Sighing out. Hathaway straightens up and turns away. He shuffles back to his swivelling chair. Perhaps it is something beyond Hathaway’s grasp—that particular arrangement of Lewis’ jaw and mouth. Perhaps there are things about the universe that are, as Dawkins claims, ungraspable.

+++

“Careful, sir, you’ll hurt yourself.”

Hathaway strides quickly to the boxes that have been left by the records staff, carelessly, on the ground in the middle of their office. Lewis looks over with a reprimanding eye.

“It’s only paper,” he answers, and wedges his hands beneath the top box.

Hathaway watches Lewis exert, push up from the knees. “And you’re not a mother hen,” Lewis grunts. He tries to shift to his desk before the grimace, but Hathaway’s gaze can turn corners. He sees Lewis wince and stoops to hoist the next box. It’s heavy.

“Not just paper, sir.” He sets it down on his own desk to pull open the flaps, spreading dust over upturned papers, and draws out a stone slab. “Mortar samples, for matching the evidence scraped up from the victim’s clothing. Literally, a load of bricks.”

“Could’ve warned me sooner,” Lewis says, flexing his back, his discomfort plain. “What are they doing here, anyway?”

Hathaway wishes he’d been quicker off the mark and saved Lewis the trouble. “You asked me to be thorough, sir. I’m following up on any possible discrepancy between the results of the scene search and the final reports.”

“And you think our murderer’s got a man in Forensics?” Lewis’ skepticism skims the surface from his vowels, leaves his words fringing the wilds of Northumbria.

Hathaway stands, and blinks.

“Right. Carry on.”

Hathaway pulls out another brick.

+++

One long and terrible evening, James is behind his desk. He is looking at the photograph, the dark lines of its frame, and it’s because he’s hungry, he hadn’t bothered to order dinner (believing, foolishly, that he would wrap it up quickly this time and have a late, but leisurely, curry), but he finds himself on his feet and he is stretching out his limbs, passing from light to shadow. He is at Lewis’ desk, fingers touching briefly to the plastic front of a folder before they extend to the photo.

It looks the same up close. Like a holiday snap of a man and his wife, taken by an obliging passer-by. Mr. and Mrs. Lewis. They know each other, like each other. They know each other well. Hathaway looks at it, his thumb uncurling to press against the bottom edge.

There’s a sound behind him.

“Sir.” Hathaway promptly replaces the photo and straightens to attention. Lewis is hovering, a hand on the door. The light from Hathaway’s desk shows up as craggy folds on his face, which is surprised. Was surprised. Hathaway watches Lewis’ eyes flick to the photograph and back, and rest upon him.

“James,” Lewis says, and it could be a question—curiosity, exasperation, but James is caught out and all he can do is hang there stiffly with his unfortunately-shaped face revealing all, everything, in its half-lit angles, in the ligament beneath his cheek as it quickly rises and falls.

There is another moment—then Lewis nods.

“Okay. Out.” Lewis jerks his head toward the dim corridor. “It doesn’t reek of vindaloo so you clearly haven’t eaten.”

Hathaway’s restored instantly, outwardly, and he turns to his desk. “I’ve almost finished—”

“Leave it, Sergeant. Let’s get you fed.”

“Now who’s playing mother hen,” Hathaway murmurs, reaching across the spread of papers to grab his jacket.

“Didn’t someone dead and clever say something once about having tea?” Lewis steps aside as Hathaway retrieves his coat from the hook on the back of the door.

Hathaway pulls his arms through the sleeves, tugs at the wool lapels. _To what a cumbersome unwieldiness / And burdenous corpulence my love had grown, / But that I did, to make it less, / And keep it in proportion, / Give it a diet, made it feed upon / That which love worst endures, discretion._

“Don’t think so, sir.”

Lewis’ eyebrows arch like hills. “We’d better hurry. You’re near beyond help.”

Lewis leans against the door and gestures for Hathaway to precede him.

“Kind of you not to mention it until now, sir,” Hathaway deadpans, thinking Lewis doesn’t know Donne or _Titus Andronicus_ but he knows “ecumenical” and he knows Wagner and he knows James, and he’s a bloody genius and it’s _unnerving_ , when Hathaway contemplates what Lewis—so he doesn’t.

He steps through the door and Lewis shuts it behind them, and through the weight of his coat comes Lewis’ hand. Lewis’ fingers clasp Hathaway’s shoulder tightly, briefly. It is leavening.

“Kebabs?”

Hathaway’s life has never been simpler. “Yeah.”

They walk through the silent hall, past the on-duty officers, into the car park, alongside each other. Lewis drives.


End file.
